Calaveras County Pileup Injures Three

San Andreas, CA — The CHP reports a distracted driver ignited a chain reaction crash on Highway 12 involving four vehicles.

The wreck happened Tuesday at 10:24 a.m. in a Caltrans construction zone on the highway and Central Hill Road intersection, west of San Andreas. The CHP reports three cars were stopped, waiting for direction from the flaggers, when 53-year-old Dominic Degen, driving a 1993 Chevy pickup, smashed into the cars, causing the four-vehicle rear end pileup.

Officer Becky Myers says, “Degen was inattentive to his driving at this time by reaching down for his lunch box and he failed to see that the traffic was stopped ahead of him. When he looked up…he applied his brakes sharply, leaving about 69 feet of locked wheel skid…striking the rear of the Honda.”

The driver of one of the cars, 70-year-old Debra Lovett, of Mokulmne Hill, and two passengers in separate vehicles, 20-year-old Raquel Lucero, and 61-year-old Sherry Grundy from Valley Springs, suffered moderate injuries. All were taken by ambulance to area hospitals.  Alcohol or drugs were not a factor in the crash, according to Myers.